Reporters Sans Frontières - Wikileaks hounded? Reporters Without Borders condemns the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at cablegate.wikileaks.org, the website dedicated to the US diplomatic cables. The organization is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Earlier this week, after the publishing several hundred of the 250.000 cables it says it has in its possession, WikiLeaks had to move its site from its servers in Sweden to servers in the United States controlled by online retailer Amazon.
Amazon quickly came under pressure to stop hosting WikiLeaks from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and its chairman, Sen. Joe Lieberman, in particular. After being ousted from Amazon, WikiLeaks found a refuge for part of its content with the French Internet company OVH. This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. 12 Theses on Wikileaks. These 0. “What do I think of Wikileaks? I think it would be a good idea!” (after Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quip on ’Western Civilisation’) These 1. Disclosures and leaks have been a feature of all times, but never before has a non state- or non- corporate affiliated group done this at the scale Wikileaks managed to with first the ‘collateral murder video’, then the ‘Afghan War Logs’ and now ‘Cablegate’.
These 2. For better or for worse, Wikileaks has skyrocketed itself into the realm of high-level international politics. These 3. In the ongoing saga termed ‘The Decline of the US Empire’, Wikileaks enters the stage as the slayer of a soft target. These 4. One of the main difficulties with explaining Wikileaks arises from the fact it is unclear - and also unclear to the Wikileaks people themselves - whether it sees itself and operates as a content provider or as a simple conduit for leaked data (whichever one, as predicated by context and circumstances, is the impression).
These 5. These 6. WikiLeaks, une vérité insoutenable ? “Une société transparente est une société totalitaire” F. Baroin (à propos de WikiLeaks) le 29.11.2010 Aucune “révélation” fracassante, rien qui ne peut ébranler le monde. Pourtant WikiLeaks a frappé le cœur du système. Il a rapporté les petites phrases diplomatiques des uns sur les autres, un gossip mondial qui expose finalement ce qui se savait ou se subodorait déjà. En substance, que la diplomatie bruisse de petites phrases, s’arrange de coups tordus, d’avis plus ou moins autorisés forcément subjectifs sur un chef d’État ou un pays.
Les câbles concernant N. Sarkozy et son américanisme ne font que confirmer le notoire. Les messages diplomatiques mis en ligne sont le fruit d’un vol. L’incursion de WikiLeaks produit un choc dans ce milieu tempéré par les mandarins omnipotents. Plus de ligne éditoriale, de joug politique dont les injonctions font taire les dossiers. Atteinte à la démocratie, dictature de la transparence, la levée de boucliers est immédiate. Il ne s’est rien passé. 2010-12-04: NSW Supreme Court Solicitor Peter Kemp: Letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
By Peter Kemp, Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, on 2010-12-04 Dear Prime Minister From the Sydney Morning Herald I note you made a comment of "illegal" on the matter of Mr Assange in relation to the ongoing leaks of US diplomatic cables. Previously your colleague and Attorney General the Honourable McClelland announced an investigation of possible criminality by Mr Assange. As a lawyer and citizen I find this most disturbing, particularly so when a brief perusal of the Commonwealth Criminal Code shows that liability arises under the Espionage provisions, for example, only when it is the Commonwealth's "secrets" that are disclosed and that there must be intent to damage the Commonwealth. Likewise under Treason law, there must be an intent to assist an enemy. Those offences remain unclear and the Swedish prosecutor Ms Ny appears to be making up the law as she wants. An Australian citizen is apparently being singled out for "special treatment" Prime Minister.
Augmentons nos démocraties de quelques lignes de code » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism. Overseeing state secrecy: In defence of WikiLeaks. The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange - David Samuels - International. Getty Images Julian Assange and Pfc Bradley Manning have done a huge public service by making hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents available on Wikileaks -- and, predictably, no one is grateful. Manning, a former army intelligence analyst in Iraq, faces up to 52 years in prison.
He is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military base in Quantico, Virginia, where he is not allowed to see his parents or other outside visitors. Assange, the organizing brain of Wikileaks, enjoys a higher degree of freedom living as a hunted man in England under the close surveillance of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies -- but probably not for long. Published reports suggest that a joint Justice Department-Pentagon team of investigators is exploring the possibility of charging Assange under the Espionage Act, which could lead to decades in jail. Wikileaks et la révolte du clergé » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism. Éric Scherer fustige les réactions hostiles à WikiLeaks d'une partie des médias traditionnels.
Face à ce nouveau venu qui bouscule encore un peu plus les anciennes pratiques du métier, il est urgent d'évoluer. "WikiLeaks, c'est très vilain, comme tout ce qui se fait sur le Net d'ailleurs. " Quand j’entends, depuis une semaine, les cris d’orfraies, le dénigrement, le mépris, l’inquiétude qui émanent du clergé médiatique face aux nouvelles fuites de WikiLeaks, je vois, hélas, une profession minée par des forces conservatrices et protectrices d’un ordre ancien, hostile à l’évolution de ses pratiques, qui veut se cramponner à des comportements d’un autre âge.
Comme le disent plusieurs voix ce week-end, il s’agit du premier vrai conflit [en] entre l’ordre établi, l’establishment, et la nouvelle culture du web. Pierre Chappaz parle de la première infowar. Et Reporter Sans Frontières a condamné samedi les tentatives pour réduire WikiLeaks au silence. Je ne veux pas dire qu’Assange est un héros. Wetting our WikiLeaks whistle | Natasha Stott Despoja. In 2007, Time magazine's person of the year was 'you' – for "…seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game.”
In highlighting this new 'digital democracy', there was a recognition of positive and negative implications of this democratic and, seemingly, uncontrollable medium. For years, books, articles and commentators have been warning us that privacy is dead. For those of us, with small ‘l’ liberal politics, when it comes to privacy rights, it’s been an alarming debate as we’ve witnessed growing intrusions into privacy through access/identity cards, CCTV cameras and a relaxation of email and phone interception laws. Surely, it was only a matter of time before the same methods were turned on those in power? If the press is the "enemy” and, as Time magazine pointed out, in this new digital democracy the press is everyone, you can see the challenges facing leaders.
Assange The Oz - Don't shoot messenger. Elizabeth Cook's artist impression of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's appearance at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, where he was denied bail after appearing on an extradition warrant. Source: AP WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks. IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win. " His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli.
The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public. I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. These things have stayed with me. It is neither. Why WikiLeaks’ latest document dump makes everyone in journalism — and the public — a winner. For some, WikiLeaks’ recent dump of diplomatic cables seems to make an excellent case for why traditional journalism still matters.
Others, however, suggest that the widespread condemnation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a sign of a toothless legacy media that can’t do its own work — and a triumph for new forms of journalism. The truth is, though, that everyone here is a winner — traditional media and non-traditional journalism and, most importantly, the public. Much of this conversation has come out of a discussion about the comparison between the Pentagon Papers’ combined 7,000 pages of documents and WikiLeaks’ 251,000 or so diplomatic cables. And as Mediaite summed up in an excellent post after this summer’s WikiLeaked release of AfPak documents, that comparison is both fair to make and overly simplistic.
In that, we need to remember that the ultimate concern, as Bill Keller has noted, is the distribution of information to the public. 1. 2. 3. 1. Though Pfc. 2. 3. The Blueprint. With every day, with every passing hour, the power of the state mobilizes against Wikileaks and Julian Assange, its titular leader. The inner processes of statecraft have never been so completely exposed as they have been in the last week. The nation state has been revealed as some sort of long-running and unintentionally comic soap opera. She doesn’t like him; he doesn’t like them; they don’t like any of us! Oh, and she’s been scouting around for DNA samples and your credit card number. You know, just in case. None of it is very pretty, all of it is embarrassing, and the embarrassment extends well beyond the state actors – who are, after all, paid to lie and dissemble, this being one of the primary functions of any government – to the complicit and compliant news media, think tanks and all the other camp followers deeply invested in the preservation of the status quo.
It’s this triviality which has angered those in power. You know what Terms of Service are? We’ve been here before. WikiLeaks a blueprint for things to come - Unleashed. Find More Stories WikiLeaks a blueprint for things to come Mark Pesce With every day, with every passing hour, the power of the state mobilises against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, its titular leader. The inner processes of statecraft have never been so completely exposed as they have been in the last week. The nation state has been revealed as some sort of long-running and unintentionally-comic soap opera.
She doesn’t like him; he doesn’t like them; they don’t like any of us! None of it is very pretty, all of it is embarrassing, and the embarrassment extends well beyond the state actors - who are, after all, paid to lie and dissemble, this being one of the primary functions of any government - to the complicit and compliant news media, think tanks and all the other camp followers deeply invested in the preservation of the status quo. Has Earth become a sort of amplified Facebook, where an in-crowd of Heathers, horrified, suddenly finds its bitchy secrets posted on a public forum?
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